Photo Flash: First Look at Artists' Rep's XMAS UNPLUGGED Double-Feature

Beginning the week of Thanksgiving and running through the end of December, Artists Rep offers Portland audiences a pair of decidedly offbeat holiday plays all in the same night. From the World Premiere of Matt Pelfrey's The Reason for the Season that involves a wrestling match between parents and Santa, to the Northwest Premiere of Anthony Neilson's The Night Before Christmas where a hostage elf tells tales of Santa's secrets - these new plays offer theatre-goers a gleeful dose of raucous, very adult, holiday spirit. Scroll down for a first look at the cast in action!

Artists Rep is calling the two-show offering XMAS UNPLUGGED. The evening will feature an outrageous Christmas Eve with a churlish Santa, a kidnapped elf and a handful of hapless souls in need of some holiday spirit. Amid the shrapnel of yuletide yearning, broken dreams and poignant revelations, can the magic of the season spark hope in their hearts? These two riotous, irreverent short plays offer a sleigh-load of that good old-fashioned, foul-mouthed, feel-good anti-classic spirit ... and just a wee dusting of that cherished Christmas feeling.

"Both of these plays are by in-your-face, prolific and provocative playwrights who just happened to have written a holiday show," said Artistic Director Dámaso Rodriguez at the production's first rehearsal. He said that both of these edgy and irreverent plays reflect the most urgent and prevalent things on all of our minds during that time of year. Both take place on Christmas Eve, both play to the mythology of the holiday and both have a lot of heart as they are essentially about parents trying to do their best for their kids ... no matter how misguided.

"This show upends our notion of yuletide mystery," said Louanne Moldovan, who is making her Artists Rep directorial debut with The Night Before Christmas. "This is essentially an adult fairy tale that shows that grown-ups, maybe even more than children, are in need of miracles."

Photo Credit: Owen Carey